Socio-Cultural Constraints of Development

Socio-Cultural Constraints of Development

To this day a correct Hindu who has

dined with a European will disinfect

himself ...byuse of cow manure. No

correct Hindu will bypass a urinating

cow without putting his hand into the

stream and wetting forehead, gar­

ments, etc. with it as does the Catholic

with holy water.

—Weber ([1921] 1958, 28)

These two fascinating sentences could be parsed and deconstructed with endless delight, but here they serve merely to begin our rendezvous with Max Weber. Weber’s study of re­ligion in India is much less fre­quently read or mentioned than his classic treatise connecting the ap­pearance of the Protestant denomi­nations with the early economic ad­vancement of Great Britain, the Low Countries, and the other regions of Europe that led off the Commercial Revolution. The linking variables were a strong work ethic, frugality, and the belief that economic success exhibited that one was in line to be “called” to heaven for doing God’s work. Weber thought this conjunc­tion of traits harmonized with an in­dividualistic, rational, cause-and­effect outlook. As translated, The Re­ligion of India runs to around 350 pages, only a tiny fraction of which are devoted to explicit comments about the effects of the Hindu con­ventions of thought on economic be­havior. Weber dismissed South Asia’s other religious traditions as being offshoots of the Hindu stem or so suf­ficiently assimilated into the Hindu mode that no distinctions needed to be drawn. A peculiarity is his fre­quent reference to the “orgiastic” di­mension of Hindu worship, epito­mized in the Shiva lingam, and he appeared to believe that wild sexual license was a common part of the reli­gion’s rituals.

Time has not treated kindly Weber’s assessment of Hindu beliefs and practices and their influence on India’s material progress. However plausible and methodologically inno­vative was The Protestant Ethic,it is difficult to conceive that informed readers have ever found The Religion of India accurate and convincing. If we may assume that the translation accurately renders into English the tone as well as the content of Weber’s writing, then his withering disdain for everything he believed he had learned about the life of the peoples of the subcontinent is the volume’s most evident feature. The book reca­pitulates exhaustively India’s reli­gious writings and derivative dissec­tions by Western interpreters. Compared to the anthropological lit­erature that emerged after World War II, Weber’s depiction of India is a lifeless rendering of putative doc­trine, much of it drawn from arid Brahmanic perspectives. Weber is quite blunt that he is drawing conclu­sions from his textual examination of economic aims and behavior, not re­porting observed conduct.He writes,

We are now in a position to enquire into the effects of the caste system on the economy. These effects were essentially negative and must rather be inferred than inductively assessed. Hence we can but phrase a few generalizations. Our sole point is that this order by its nature is completely traditionalistic and anti-rational in its effects.(Weber [1921] 1958, 111)

In the most derisive contrast Weber draws between the Protestant and Hindu ethics, he writes,

In addition to the ritualistic and tradi­tional inner relation anchored through the caste order to the samsara and karma teaching..., there also appeared the reli­gious anthropolatry of the Hindu laity against the naturally strong, traditionalistic, charismatic clergy of the gurus. These hindered the rationaliza­tion of life conduct throughout. It is quite evident that no community dominated by inner powers of this sort could out of its own substance arrive at the “spirit of cap­italism.” (Weber [1921] 1958, 325)

Not content with this sweeping dep­recation, Weber proceeds to say that India is incapable of taking over capi­talism as an “artifact” as the Japa­nese did. He adds dismissively that should the “thin conquering strata” of the Europeans vanish, South Asia would relapse into “the old feudal robber romanticism of the Indian Middle Ages” (Weber [1921] 1958, 325).

Weber certainly overstated the rigidities implicit in the impact of the Hindu ethic on labor stratification, as embodied in the caste system and as reinforced by the Brahmanic doc­trines of pollution, karma, dharma, and samsara. Further, because of his reliance on scriptures rather than observation and field inquiry, he could not appreciate the many diverse forms of caste, belief, and worship across the whole range of the subcontinent’s villages and families. As Harold A. Gould and others have recognized, caste is a multifaceted phenomenon, with sacred, ritualistic, ethnic, and economic dimensions that may vary independently (Gould 1988). The interplay between caste and economic change in the modern world is complex: “Viewed in histori­cal perspective, one sees that the capacity of castes to employ their pri­mordial characteristics for ethnically integrated cooperative action in the modern economy and polity has itself provided the impetus for major modi­fications in the internal structure” (14-15).

The wide-gauge Weberian critique of South Asian religion and institu­tions has recent parallel partners. K. William Kapp’s Hindu Culture, Eco­nomic Development, and Economic Planning in India (1963) is represen­tative of post-independence pessi­mism. Although capital formation and skilled labor were critical vari­ables, Kapp remarks that “it can hardly be doubted” that Hindu cul­ture slowed economic growth, citing “non-secular and pre-technological institutions and values such as the hierarchically organized caste sys­tem, the limited or static levels of aspirations, moral aloofness, casteism and factionalism—to name only a few of the major barriers” (64-65). Kapp’s rendering of South Asian institutions and his assertion of their negative impact on develop­ment are in retrospect mechanical and deterministic and wholly fail to capture the dynamism set in train by the early years of planning.

Gunnar Myrdal undertook a mammoth survey of South Asia’s development prospects in the three-volume Asian Drama (1968). Seeking to balance economic and social analysis, Myrdal found reli­gion and social values to be obstruc­tive of developmental gains. The Asian Drama is pervaded by Ibsenesque gloom. Perhaps without fully realizing it, Myrdal was thrown off balance by the disorder and squa­lor of the subcontinent compared to the placidity and tidiness of Scandi­navia. His most remembered neolo­gism arose from his disappointment with the Indian version of democratic socialism and with the performances of the other governments of the sub­continent, which spurred him to label the region’s polities “soft states.” As did Weber and Kapp, Myrdal erred in permitting a stylized depiction of South Asian culture to dominate his assessment of the potential for strong economic performance whether arising from state-managed collective accomplishment or from spontaneous individual achievements.

Myrdal moved down the well-trod path of castigating Hinduism for its mystical, nonrational character. Only a change in values would suffice to permit institutional reform and economic modernization via state planning; inescapably, South Asians would have to absorb the following virtues: efficiency, diligence, orderli­ness, punctuality, frugality, scrupu­lous honesty, energetic enterprise, a willingness to take the long view (Myrdal 1968, 1:61-62), although each is “alien to the region” (1:73). Myrdal attacked the plethora of sacred cows (1:89), the South Asian fascination with astrology and horo­scopes, and laborers’ conformity to the backward-bending supply curve (3:1872). The Asian Drama was a strange and dated study when it appeared and is only more so from the contemporary vantage point.

Weber’s pessimism about South Asia’s potential for the pursuit of eco­nomic advantage rested on twin pil­lars. The first was the nonrational character of Hindu thought and its antimaterialist spirituality, and the second was the “social expression” of the Hindu ethic, especially in the form of the caste hierarchy. Let us set aside the motivational component for later treatment and examine here several formulations of the caste-as­rub proposition. Weber understood the layers of caste in the bookish terms that defined the four varnas: Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, and Sudras, or Priests, Warriors, Mer­chants, and Workers, the latter including farmers and craftspeople. A fifth stratum, the Untouchables, was made up of castes, such as the Leatherworkers, whose occupations brought them into contact with pol­luting materials, and tribals who were not fully assimilated into Hindu society. The broad conjecture that the hierarchical Hindu caste system must stultify social mobility and eco­nomic achievement has fueled an important component of the culture-economy squabble. To anticipate the conclusion to the ensuing review of the most interesting features of the caste-mobility discussions, what we will find is that a strict either-or posi­tion is not tenable. It turns out that a middle way, based on solid social sci­ence investigation, leads to the dis­covery of which aspects of caste mat­ter in South Asia’s economic affairs and where lie the main lines of connection.

From the 1950s on, anthropolo­gists, sociologists, and economists have conducted countless studies of castes in South Asia. Many have looked closely at the economic dimen­sions of the caste system. The result is a much clearer and sharper focus on culture-economy relationships, and, with allowance for lingering small differences of opinion, there now exists a consensus about the main patterns. On an illustrative basis, we can look at two clusters of well-known studies of the Indian case. The first concerns the relation­ship between the caste structure and the village economy; the second con­siders the continuing implications of caste for the modern labor force. The chief conclusion is that caste was and remains a highly influential force in shaping labor relations in India’s villages and urban workplaces, although, contrary to Weber or Kapp, the effects of caste do not weigh nega­tively in any direct way on aggregate measures of economic change and growth.

Although the notion of varna serves as a rough means of defining India’s social strata, the operational unit of the caste system is the jati.A jati is an endogamous grouping of families, so it follows that an infant is born with an indelible jati identity; and, logically, parents and elders must ensure that the boundaries of the jati are preserved, making arranged marriages a necessary complement. Jatis are known by occupational labels such as Washer-men, Barbers, Goldsmiths, Potters, Herdsmen, Distillers, or Priests. In the villages, configurations of these jatis constitute the division of labor, along with Peasants or Landowners (for example, Epstein 1962). William Wiser (1936) used the term “jajmani system” to summarize the networks of exchange, mostly in labor and kind, that linked the food-producing Peasant families with the artisan and service families. Much detailed work has shown that there has never been a strict one-to-one correspon­dence of jati occupation and village families’ actual work (for example, Leaf 1984). Many families may own land or have tenancy rights to small plots, and many families may provide farm labor, although most landless workers are from the lowest caste and Untouchable households. Despite these ambiguities and fluidities, the imprint of caste on the rural division of labor is undeniable and continues forcefully down to the present.

A jati’s rank in the social hierar­chy of the village derives from three vectors. The first is the degree to which the jati’s occupation is ritually demeaning or polluting. Washermen are polluted by their handling of soiled clothing and menstrual cloths.

Leatherworkers are polluted by deal­ing with dead animals and processing hides. Ironsmiths are not much stigmatized by their work. The second is the wealth in land held by the jati’s families and to a lesser extent its holdings of livestock or other assets. The third criterion is the jati’s political clout, which derives from its numbers, cohesion, and leadership. As David Mandelbaum (1970) has explained in full detail in his synthesis of the apposite literature, mobility in Indian society is feasible and avidly pursued, but it is a mobility of unified and successful jatis, not a mobility of individuals or isolated families. Fur­ther, Mandelbaum is explicit about the robust connection between the quest for social advancement and economic gains. He writes,“The drive for collective mobility is of surpass­ing concern to many villagers because they believe that greater power and material rewards are won by those who gain higher rank” (429).

Does jati mobility actually occur in concert with changes in subcastes’ relative economic positions, or is this only a theoretical potentiality? F. G. Bailey (1957) wrote one of the first and still one of the best accounts of jati mobility growing out of advan­tages presented by economic change. In an Orissan village, Bisipara, the status of families and jatis was revised by the degree to which they successfully responded to opportuni­ties presented by British rule and the spread of commerce. Bailey reports, “The biggest gains went to the Dis­tiller caste-groups, who profited from a monopoly arising out of caste-beliefs and Government support” (173). Today, Bailey’s example can be multiplied manyfold. Jatis in India continue to joust for social position, political heft, and economic gain. As important as rising is holding the lower jatis down. Not surprisingly, because material benefits are at stake, such conflict often becomes testy and violent. In urban areas, individual accomplishment outside of jati membership is now more feasi­ble, but it would be an error of the first order to think that personal achievement had displaced jati ascription and collective mobility. The bottom line is that although social mobility takes a different form in India from its form in the United States, material gain is both an instrument and a consequence of the pursuit of status.

Weber ([1921] 1958) remarks that subcastes acting “like quasi-trade unions, facilitate the legitimate defense of both internal and external interests” (33). Others have empha­sized the guild-like nature of the occupational quasi-monopolies enjoyed by jatis. Thomas Beidelman (1959) criticized Wiser’s sentiment that the jajmani system involved more or less persistent and agreeable terms of exchange among the landed, craft, and service subcastes, on the grounds that Wiser had underesti­mated the use of force to maintain a pattern of unequal transfers between the landed families and their retain­ers. The capacity of the service fami­lies to boycott the landed families was rarely converted into a winning hand in disputes over payments, and the latter usually emerged victori­ous.In fact,this was such a likely out­come that there were many fewer overt breaches of the order of life than one would expect, given the extremes of social and economic inequality that typically prevailed in a village. There can be scant doubt that the doctrines of dharma and karma acclimatized the lower orders to an acceptance of their lot in life, but Hinduism is hardly alone among religions in supporting social stability.

Neither Beidelman nor Wiser argued that the degree of occupa­tional monopoly sustained by the principles of caste and the jajmani system exercised a chronic restraint on economic change or growth. To the contrary, as with Bailey’s Distillers, they perceived that it was the quick­ness and effectiveness of jati reac­tions to changing commercial and employment opportunities that injected new dynamisms into the never ending pursuit of relative mobility. Indeed, we may go further and recognize that families and jatis in modern India go to great lengths to raise their schooling levels by send­ing able children upward in the edu­cational system. Jati networks are important avenues of job information and search. Regional caste associa­tions have been instrumental in founding many institutions of higher education, much as religious denomi­nations in the United States have sponsored colleges and universities. From the inside, in other words, a jati is perceived as an alliance that pro­vides resources and strength for its member families in competing with rivals.

In his comparative study of nations’ historical growth trajecto­ries,Mancur Olson (1982) reverted to a position very close to Weber’s. Olson used his theory of collective action to argue that village jatis acted as multigenerational “distrib­utive coalitions” in seeking to extract the greatest economic gains from their occupational monopolies (157). The struggle between subcastes to maintain or advance their positions and interests meant that fewer col­lective resources were available for private or public investment, so that India’s economic growth wavered for many centuries around zero. Although this précis oversimplifies Olson’s logic, his thesis depends cru­cially on, first, whether jatis were the strong labor unions he imagines and, second, whether they would and could successfully compete for pieces of the village economic pie. As has been depicted, the pairing of a jati’s occupational label and the types of work its member families actually performed has always been weaker than implied in strictly limned images. Further, most artisan groups in a given village were too small in number or too poorly organized to confront even moderately cohesive Peasant lineages. As intriguing as Olson’s postulate is, inter-jati eco­nomic rivalry was sufficiently lim­ited in scale that it should not be allo­cated much if any role in India’s long-term economic stasis. Moreover, most intra-village conflict takes the form of faction rivalry in which alliances of Peasant households with their client and laborer retain­ers vie with similar cross-jati assemblages.

One of the shibboleths of colonial thought was the conviction that non-European workers were indolent. Put more analytically, their conduct was expected to violate the norm of the upward-and right-ward-sloping supply curve of labor. Instead of offering more labor indi­vidually or collectively at higher wages, indigenous workers aimed at target incomes and worked less, the resulting function being a back-ward-bending supply curve of effort. Weber ([1921] 1958) says it nicely: “An increase in wage rate does not mean for them an incentive for more work or for a higher standard of liv­ing, but the reverse. They then take longer holidays because they can afford to do so,or their wives decorate themselves with ornaments” (14). From at least the middle of the nine­teenth century onward, the expan­sion of public works, government, banking, the railways, and manufac­turing enterprise has generated demands for workers. Obviously, many of the skills and occupations were new to South Asia. The key question is, Have attitudes toward labor effort and reward, or the caste system, blocked or skewed the provi­sion of workers into new occupations in a manner that has retarded eco­nomic growth and development?

There is general agreement that the recruitment of an Indian labor force into new tasks as the economy has changed over the past two centu­ries has not been a sluggish or costly process. One can point to a few cases, such as the early Assam tea estates, where solicitation of labor was diffi­cult except from the poorest areas of Bihar. Even in this instance, the iso­lation of the plantations, the high mortality rate in transit and in situ, and the onerous terms of contractual bondage are better explanations than any intrinsic unwillingness to move to superior work. The construc­tion of the Indian railways from the 1850s onward drew heavily on local workers, and the rail companies’ ever expanding numbers of operations personnel were overwhelmingly composed of Indians and Anglo-Indi­ans. The decennial Indian censuses (from 1871 onward) provide ample evidence of a changing labor force structure marching in step with the evolution of the Indian economy. Morris D. Morris (1965) wrote a benchmark study of the recruitment of labor into the Bombay cotton tex­tile industry, finding little friction in the creation of a committed, produc­tive workforce. Parenthetically, too, we may credit Morris (1967) with an effective rebuttal of Weber’s expres­sion of the Hindu ethic’s debilitating economic impacts. Morris’s insis­tence on explaining the pace and dis­tribution of economic development by primary reliance on conventional grounds, such as regional advan­tages, resource abundance, transpor­tation costs, and the allocation of credit, was a salutary remedy for overreaching and speculative theses of social determination.

Representative of modern studies, Marc Holmström’s (1984) scrutiny of the formal and informal sectors finds abundant contrivance and agility in reaping rewards from changing employment chances. This is not to say that there are no quirks or anom­alies in the Indian labor market. A very common presence is that of the sirdar or mukadum, a labor factor or intermediary. Often a leading figure in a village or jati, this middleman is responsible for recruiting migrant or permanent labor for a particular activity, such as sugarcane cutting or work in a factory or on a construction site in Mumbai or Delhi. The factor is responsible for the mobilization and transport of his recruits and may be involved in small loans against pay. He works through net­works in the caste or village and, on the one side, keeps his workers happy and, on the other, relieves the farmer or foreman of many responsi­bilities for managing workers and dealing with their commonplace human needs.

There is no evidence that Indian workers have been unresponsive to labor market signals, which is scarcely surprising in view of the sea­sonality of agrarian labor or the very low returns that prevail in many rural occupations. Traditional skills and a modicum of formal education sufficed until accessible modern edu­cational institutions were created after independence. Brahmans cleaved easily to posts in the British colonial regime, and many made the transition into the cadres of the post-independence civil services. The Indian army has absorbed and trained generations of sepoys, often drawing them from the same fami­lies and regions. At any point, though, when we align the caste structure of the modern labor force, we see a very strong tendency for rep­lication of the caste hierarchy. Brah­mans keep the books, Warrior and farmer castes enter the army, arti­sans are on the assembly lines, and Sweepers clean the shop floors and toilets.

Differential caste access to educa­tion and the absence, surprising in India’s liberal democracy, of any con­stitutional or binding legislative commitment to universal education and literacy have permitted the pro­jection of the traditional caste ladder onto the contemporary workforce. Given the aforementioned delinea­tion of the intensity of jati rivalry for social and economic positioning, it should not be astonishing that much of modern Indian politics revolves around populist candidates pledging to widen the access of lower caste groups to reserved school seats and public sector jobs and the counter­vailing hostility of the high castes to such public favoritism.India’s consti­tution contains lists, or schedules, of tribes and subcastes that are the des­ignated beneficiaries of affirmative action programs. In consequence, there is more competition at the national and state levels to join the public rosters of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes than there is to escape the designation.

In summary, religious values or attitudes have little or no impact on work habits or the work ethic in the Indian scene. The caste system does matter in significant fashion, not by inhibiting labor force availability so much as by imposing discriminatory barriers to jobs and educational openings. The sheer abundance, energy, and skills of India’s massive workforce ensure that labor demands are rather easily satisfied for the moment. There is a rub of cul­ture operating in India’s labor mar­kets, imposing high current political costs stemming from intrinsic unfairness. The failure to make full and nondiscriminatory use of all the nation’s workers’ innate industry and intelligence constitutes a poten­tial drag on the economy as it moves closer to full employment, but the play of majoritarian politics and the existing awareness of the political and economic risks of countenancing inequality in perpetuity will not let this happen.